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A modern setting for Modern Art

In 1930, Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv, invited Russian-French early Modernist artist Marc Chagall to Tel Aviv to discuss the establishment of a city art museum. Chagall accepted and arrived in March of 1931. During his visit, the artist gifted two of his works to the future museum. Thus Chagall’s painting Jew with Torah, 1925 was the first work to officially enter the museum’s collection.

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, situated on the second floor of Dizengoff’s private home, opened to the public in 1932. Over the subsequent decades, the museum continued to develop and expand, and many artists and private collectors donated works to the city’s art institution in support of Tel Aviv’s cultural legacy.